DOCSLIB.ORG

In Error, Immoral, Unethical, and Impossible for Me to Attend

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
In Error, Immoral, Unethical, and Impossible for Me to Attend Severe Bipolar Clinical Depression vs. WCA: In Error, Immoral, Unethical, and Impossible For Me To Attend Supporter Morgan Freeman, in a personal capacity Your Ref. (My NI No.): WM549438D Dear DWP/Atos Staffer, On Sat 01 June 2013, I was aghast to receive a letter, signed ‘Atos Healthcare’ (sic) and dated Thu 30 May 2013, summoning me to attend what I can only assume is the infamous and discredited ‘Work Capability Assessment’ (WCA) [1] at 15:20 on Fri 14 Jun 2013 at a ‘Marylebone Medical Assessment Centre’. The letter and accompanying pamphlet both neglect to mention the actual name of the assessment I am being summoned to attend. I am currently bumping along the bottom of an episode of severe bipolar clinical depression; so it’s taking an excessively strenuous and stressful amount of mental energy, dogged perseverance, and fitful concentration to overcome the depressive symptomatic urge to just “Bin this rubbish, and face the detrimental consequences later (which is all I deserve anyway, because I’m worthless scum)”, and rather to do the right thing: to explain to the DWP/Atos why I believe this summoning to be in error, immoral, unethical, and impossible for me to attend. So although I am currently at just about my weakest and most vulnerable, and therefore least able to self-advocate in my own best interests, I shall nevertheless take some days to assemble my considered response. Since this considered response message is both thorough and extensive, you may prefer to read it on paper rather than on screen. To that end, I have attached a version formatted for printing on A4 paper: • ‘Severe Bipolar Clinical Depression vs. WCA.pdf’ – PDF, 3.5 MB, pp26, this very document When this document is viewed in a PDF reader app on screen (such as Adobe Reader, OS X Preview, etc.), you should be able to access the web hyperlinks to external content – news reports, video on demand (VoD), etc. – Severe Bipolar Clinical Depression vs. WCA: In Error, Immoral, Unethical, and Impossible For Me To Attend Page 1 of 26 as indeed you can from within the HTML-formatted email message to which it was attached. Note also that while GoogleMail can be unreliable in transmitting inline images, the PDF version is guaranteed to be correctly illustrated. THE STRUGGLE TO ACQUIRE ADEQUATE EMAIL ADDRESSES @Atos – This impersonal boilerplate letter from your profit-centric enterprise (£100 million per year from the DWP! [2]) simply presumes that any recipient can use a telephone to respond to its contents, which seems to be a self-evidently preposterous presumption when it is being sent out to people living with a diverse range of physical and mental health conditions and disabilities. As my completed ESA50 form clearly indicates, there are a host of severe-clinical-depression-related symptomatic reasons why I cannot simply pick up the phone and make outgoing calls to untrusted strangers; and your letter significantly fails to provide an email address by which to communicate in writing, nor any web address where such might be found, thus forcing me to try to discover such by online searching. The closest to your Atos ‘appointments help desk’ I can find is your ‘ESA/WCA Customer Service’ email address, <[email protected]> – so do please forward this message as appropriate within the atoshealthcare.com domain in order to expedite correcting the error detailed below, and cancel the WCA at 15:20 on 14 Jun 2013 at Marylebone Medical Assessment Centre. @DWP – The impersonal boilerplate letter from Atos states, “[…] if you would like more information about why you need an assessment, please contact the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) office that deals with your claim.” My most recent ‘Employment and Support Allowance – Support Group’ (ESA-SG) entitlement letter, dated Thu 07 Feb 2013, also significantly fails to provide an email address by which to communicate in writing, and of the web address it does contain, my ISP's ‘BT Web Address Help’ service has this to say: “Sorry, the website www.jobcentreplus.gov.uk cannot be found.” By using the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine, I was able to establish that this domain hasn’t been updated since Thu 31 Jan 2013, so its inclusion in my Thu 07 Feb 2013 ESA-SG entitlement letter seems to have been perversely unhelpful. So yet again, I’ve been forced to try to discover an appropriate email address by online searching. My best educated guesstimate is the email address behind the [ Contact JobCentre Plus central team ➔ ] button on the DirectGov domain's ‘Contact Jobcentre Plus’ web service, which for my postcode yields up: To: <[email protected]> Subject: JCP Contact Us Local Office - London (Makerfield) Benefit Centre So, as far as using snail mail letters to provide ESA claimants with an up-to-date relevant email contact address goes, both Atos and the DWP’s complete lack of any effort whatsoever are best categorised as a double-headed “EPIC FAIL!”; and again – do please forward this message as appropriate within the jobcentreplus.gsi.gov.uk domain in order to expedite correcting the error detailed below. As you can no doubt appreciate, before I can even get to begin to address the substantive issue at hand, I’ve been forced to expend both significant time and mental effort in not only seeking out how to contact Atos and the DWP by email, but also in highlighting for both organisations their joint failures in providing an up-to-date relevant email contact address in their snail mail letters to ESA claimants. Thankfully, I have over time acquired the prerequisite ICT skills and resources, and can at a push summon up sufficient personal tenacity, both of which have been necessary to locate the most likely correct email address candidates to which to send my considered response message. However, no doubt many other sick and disabled folk in a similar situation, who could also positively benefit from exchanging written communications by email, are being blocked from doing so by Atos and the DWP’s “EPIC FAIL!” in providing claimants with an up-to-date relevant email contact address. Please do consider dragging your business communications channels kicking and screaming into the 21st century, since sending snail mail letters is both unnecessarily slow, resource and energy profligate, and soooo 19th century, while some people (like me) simply cannot use 20th century phone technology due to the disability and/or illness which forms the basis of our entitlement to ESA-SG. Severe Bipolar Clinical Depression vs. WCA: In Error, Immoral, Unethical, and Impossible For Me To Attend Page 2 of 26 MEDICAL, DISABILITY, AND BENEFIT ENTITLEMENT HISTORY I am a person living with Type II Bipolar Affective Disorder, and have been doing so for three decades. Under the direction of my ex-consultant psychiatrist, we trialled each of the current crop of psychotropic prophylactic mood stabiliser medications, all of which only have a therapeutic effect for a proportion of people with bipolar disorder – and unfortunately, for each drug, I fell in the cohort of patients for whom that drug fails to stabilise pathological mood swings. So the only medication I have found to be effective is an antidepressant, a second generation serotonin–norepinephrine reuptake inhibitor called venlafaxine. This has an effect in limiting the duration of my episodes of severe bipolar clinical depression, but not their severity. I’ve been taking 150 mg of venlafaxine per day since February 2013, to address this current episode of severe clinical depression, at which dosage I’m told it inhibits the synaptic reuptake of two neurotransmitters, namely serotonin and noradrenaline (aka norepinephrine in the USA). Up to 2012, I was in receipt of Income Support (IS) in lieu of Incapacity Benefit (IB), along with Disability Living Allowance (DLA) – the latter of which I continue to receive. In late 2011, I received and completed my ESA50 questionnaire form (but only with the loving assistance of my life long friend and supporter Andreas Goldner), and the stress and anxiety thus provoked in me by the DWP and Atos in necessitating my transition from IS to ESA-SG cost me very dearly indeed, by plunging me head first into a six-month long episode of severe bipolar clinical depression. In early 2013, the prospect of the forthcoming changes to benefits precipitated another descent into severe clinical depression. I was forced to spend a month and a half persuading Lambeth Council that they were breaching their own Council Tax Support (CTS) policy to fully protect vulnerable residents, including disabled people, from the detrimental effects of the changeover from Council Tax Benefit (CTB) to CTS, since they were demanding money with menaces from me – they threatened to take expensive legal action against me, which I was apparently expected to pay for, over non-payment of a personal Council Tax liability for 2013/2014, which they eventually conceded amounted to… £0.00. Now in mid 2013, I receive what I believe to be an erroneous summoning to attend an unspecified ‘fitness for work’ assessment, and going by the evidence available online from other sick and disabled people in a similar situation, I may be facing another months-long uphill battle with Atos and the DWP to get this error corrected. Needless to say, the stress and worry created by these national and local state attacks on my benefit entitlements continues to have a detrimental effect on my mental health and general well-being; and looming large on the horizon, and with much dark foreboding, comes the prospect of being forced to negotiate the transitions from DLA to Personal Independence Payment, and from multiple benefits to Universal Credit.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • The Leftist Case for War in Iraq •fi William Shawcross, Allies
    Fordham International Law Journal Volume 27, Issue 6 2003 Article 6 Vengeance And Empire: The Leftist Case for War in Iraq – William Shawcross, Allies: The U.S., Britain, Europe, and the War in Iraq Hal Blanchard∗ ∗ Copyright c 2003 by the authors. Fordham International Law Journal is produced by The Berke- ley Electronic Press (bepress). http://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/ilj Vengeance And Empire: The Leftist Case for War in Iraq – William Shawcross, Allies: The U.S., Britain, Europe, and the War in Iraq Hal Blanchard Abstract Shawcross is superbly equipped to assess the impact of rogue States and terrorist organizations on global security. He is also well placed to comment on the risks of preemptive invasion for existing alliances and the future prospects for the international rule of law. An analysis of the ways in which the international community has “confronted evil,” Shawcross’ brief polemic argues that U.S. President George Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair were right to go to war without UN clearance, and that the hypocrisy of Jacques Chirac was largely responsible for the collapse of international consensus over the war. His curious identification with Bush and his neoconservative allies as the most qualified to implement this humanitarian agenda, however, fails to recognize essential differences between the leftist case for war and the hard-line justification for regime change in Iraq. BOOK REVIEW VENGEANCE AND EMPIRE: THE LEFTIST CASE FOR WAR IN IRAQ WILLIAM SHAWCROSS, ALLIES: THE U.S., BRITAIN, EUROPE, AND THE WAR IN IRAQ* Hal Blanchard** INTRODUCTION In early 2002, as the war in Afghanistan came to an end and a new interim government took power in Kabul,1 Vice President Richard Cheney was discussing with President George W.
    [Show full text]
  • Geopolitics, Oil Law Reform, and Commodity Market Expectations
    OKLAHOMA LAW REVIEW VOLUME 63 WINTER 2011 NUMBER 2 GEOPOLITICS, OIL LAW REFORM, AND COMMODITY MARKET EXPECTATIONS ROBERT BEJESKY * Table of Contents I. Introduction .................................... ........... 193 II. Geopolitics and Market Equilibrium . .............. 197 III. Historical U.S. Foreign Policy in the Middle East ................ 202 IV. Enter OPEC ..................................... ......... 210 V. Oil Industry Reform Planning for Iraq . ............... 215 VI. Occupation Announcements and Economics . ........... 228 VII. Iraq’s 2007 Oil and Gas Bill . .............. 237 VIII. Oil Price Surges . ............ 249 IX. Strategic Interests in Afghanistan . ................ 265 X. Conclusion ...................................... ......... 273 I. Introduction The 1973 oil supply shock elevated OPEC to world attention and ensconced it in the general consciousness as a confederacy that is potentially * M.A. Political Science (Michigan), M.A. Applied Economics (Michigan), LL.M. International Law (Georgetown). The author has taught international law courses for Cooley Law School and the Department of Political Science at the University of Michigan, American Government and Constitutional Law courses for Alma College, and business law courses at Central Michigan University and the University of Miami. 193 194 OKLAHOMA LAW REVIEW [Vol. 63:193 antithetical to global energy needs. From 1986 until mid-1999, prices generally fluctuated within a $10 to $20 per barrel band, but alarms sounded when market prices started hovering above $30. 1 In July 2001, Senator Arlen Specter addressed the Senate regarding the need to confront OPEC and urged President Bush to file an International Court of Justice case against the organization, on the basis that perceived antitrust violations were a breach of “general principles of law.” 2 Prices dipped initially, but began a precipitous rise in mid-March 2002.
    [Show full text]
  • Us Failure in Afghanistan: Half-Baked Planning Or Pakistan?
    127 US FAILURE IN AFGHANISTAN: HALF-BAKED PLANNING OR PAKISTAN? Muhammad Hashim Zafar Wadhen, Shafei Moiz Hali and Adnan Jamil* Abstract The Global War on Terrorism, launched as a direct result of the heinous 9/11 attacks, has been wagging on for almost two decades with no clear signs of victory for the US. The US on a strategic level has lost the war as the primary opponent, Taliban, holds more territory than ever. The US and NATO coalition not only planned to eradicate terrorism in the country but also had great ambitions to modernize and rebuild the country; however, little has been archived so far. Amidst these harsh realities, Pakistan being a major non-NATO ally is often blamed to sabotage the war efforts by playing a so-called double-game while supporting the Global War on Terrorism on one hand and helping the Taliban on the other. Therefore, this paper investigates the reasons for the US failure in Afghanistan on a macro-level and what role Pakistan has played. Other than the notion that Pakistan is to blame, factors, such as, the US has no real long- term objectives for the war, employing conventional methods of warfare, underestimating the opponent and the terrain, lack of coordination among the NATO member states and the sudden attention shift from Afghanistan to Iraq, played a significant role in the current outcome. After evaluating all the evidence from the last two decades, it is clear that half-baked US planning led to the eventual failure of the war effort. Keywords: GWOT, Pakistan, Taliban, NATO, Terrorism.
    [Show full text]
  • Windfall Tax Campaign Toolkit ‘A Windfall for Social and Environmental Justice’
    cDIREoCTIONmFOR THE pass DEMOCRATIC LEFT February 2009 Windfall Tax Campaign Toolkit ‘A windfall for social and environmental justice’ By Gemma Tumelty & Jenna Khalfan Windfall Tax Campaign Toolkit Introduction & Contents Rising energy and fuel prices are affecting everyone but it's the poorest and those on fixed incomes who are paying the heaviest price for the essentials of life - light and heat. This situation is unsustainable and should be challenged. Compass believes that the moment is right for the government to levy a sensible one off windfall tax on the energy and oil companies to guarantee social and environmental justice for the common good of people living today and for future generations. The government can move quickly and decisively now - but it needs to know that this is what the people want. We have developed a toolkit to help you campaign locally and nationally to have your say in this important debate. Contents 1. Briefing questions and answers 2. Key statistics 3. Campaign aims and actions 4. What you can do locally a. Get local Labour Party, Students’ Union and trade union support b. How to Lobby your MP c. Local media d. energy companies 5. Building a local coalition: pensioners groups, anti-poverty groups, church groups, fuel poverty groups, single parent networks etc Appendix 1. Who supports a windfall tax 2. Model letter to MPs 3. Model letter to the Chancellor Windfall Tax Campaign Toolkit www.compassonline.org.uk PAGE 1 1. Briefing questions agreed to raise this to a £150 million a be particularly targeted at families in or and answers year by 2010, with the rate of price rises facing fuel poverty.
    [Show full text]
  • 2000 Annual Report Green Alliance’S Mission Is to Promote Sustainable Development by Ensuring That the Environment Is at the Heart of Decision-Making
    1999 - 2000 annual report Green Alliance’s mission is to promote sustainable development by ensuring that the environment is at the heart of decision-making. It works with senior people in government, parliament, business and the environmental movement to encourage new ideas, dialogue and constructive solutions. Green Alliance has three main aims: . to make the environment a central political issue; . to integrate the environment effectively in public policy and decision-making; . to stimulate new thinking and advance the environmental agenda into new areas. We wish to thank Severn Trent plc for their support of this year’s annual report. Green Alliance’s publications are supported by DETR’s Environmental Action Fund. chair’s report Green Alliance’s twenty-first year, and my first year as Chair, has been a dynamic and productive one. A growing budget and staff have enabled us to play an increasingly significant role in the politics and policy of the environment in the UK. Climate change continues to pose a serious environmental challenge to politicians and policy-makers alike. Green Alliance has contributed to the UK energy policy debate on a wide range of issues, from the climate change levy to utility regulation. Our key recommendations for renewable energy have been adopted by government and our proposal for a sustainable energy agency has been endorsed by the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution. Biotechnology policy, too, has remained high on the political and public agendas. Our recommendations and leading role over many years were recognised this year with the creation of the new Agriculture and Environment Biotechnology Commission and the appointment of Julie Hill to the position of deputy chair.
    [Show full text]
  • Newsletter June 2013 Contentsadvertisement HDA Newsletter June 2013 Page
    Huntington’s Disease Association Newsletter June 2013 ContentsAdvertisement HDA Newsletter June 2013 Page Message From The Chair 3 Message from the Chief Executive 4 June 2013 Newsletter Information 5 JHD Summary 6 Major Roche-Isis deal boosts Huntington’s disease gene silencing 7 Summary of prevalence of adult HD 10 Train HD Six Monthly Report 10 Liver changes in Huntington’s disease patients suggest more ‘whole body’ research needed 11 Is a new technique set to revolutionize Huntington’s disease genetic testing? 14 Impact Award 18 John Heald, former ChairmanW elcomeand Director of theto HDA 19 Awareness Week 2013 19 Recognition is the name; e-petition is the game 21 NHS Changes - Hopes & Fearsthe 69th 23 Tracing hd – a personal story 24 Personal Independence Payment issue 25 Yoga and HD 26 Young Adult Weekend 2013 of the 28 Fundraising 29 Scroll of Honour Newsletter 46 Branch Update 52 Support Groups and Branches of the HDA 53 News from the RCA Team 65 Staff Contact Details 74 Tributes 75 Forthcoming Events 2013 83 Opinions and recommendations appearing in articles within this Newsletter may not necessarily represent those of the Association. Items which include details of accommodation and services are printed in good faith. Complaints: If you are not satisfied with the services we provide please tell us. You can either do so verbally or contact Head Office for a copy of our Complaints Procedure together with the necessary form. Confidentiality and your right to be heard will be maintained. Editorial Panel: Panel: Sally Phoenix,Cath Stanley, Cath Stanley, Bill Brenda Crowder Stevenson, and Eleni Becky Zacharius Davis Message from the Chair 2013 has started where we Bakewell, Financial Accountant and our dear left in 2012; I have been friends and supporters; Professor Sarah extremely busy working Tabrizi, Professor of Clinical Neurology and with your Executive Dr Ed Wild, Clinical Lecturer in Neurology, Council Trustees.
    [Show full text]
  • Letter from Oldham by William Franklin Wednesday 6Th April 2011
    Letter from Oldham by William Franklin Wednesday 6th April 2011 When are the banks going to be reformed? by Michael Meacher first published on Michael Meacher’s blog on 27th March 2011 Michael Meacher is the long-serving Labour Party Member at the Westminster Parliament for the Manchester constituency of Oldham West and Royton. William Franklin stood against Michael Meacher in the Blair-Brown New Labour Landslide of May 1997 as a representative for the UK Referendum Party...and was soundly whipped...Malcolm Meacher gaining more votes than all the other candidates put together. It is astonishing that the banks, having cost the country £68bn in bailouts plus an additional £850bn in loan guarantees, asset protection schemes and enhanced liquidity, have not been reformed in any way in structure, pay, bonuses or lending. True, the Vickers Commission is due to report later this year and make some division between the investment and retail arms of banks. Or it may fudge the issue, or the Tory Party, which has been shown to get half its funding from the finance sector, may succumb to the intense lobbying from the banks to do little or nothing. So what should actually be done? An ingenious new proposal has just been put forward by two NGOs, the New Economics Foundation and Positive Money, which deserves strong support. At root it involves two reforms. One is that the bank payments system is separated from risky lending activity, so that the failure of investments cannot damage the essential bank role of providing payments to depositors. This would have prevented the crash of 2007-8; only the investors would have suffered the consequences of their own recklessness and excesses, not the taxpayers.
    [Show full text]
  • Working with Ministers: a Practical Handbook on Advising, Briefing & Drafting
    Working with Ministers A practical handbook on advising, briefing & drafting A new edition of the handbook written by Christopher Jary now revised by the original author with Laura Bryant-Smith of the Policy Profession Support Unit 2 WORKING WITH MINISTERS 0-9536688-2-7 © Crown Copyright 2004 Sixth Edition Published January 2015 First edition published May 2004 Second edition published May 2005 Third edition published October 2006 Fourth edition published March 2008 Fifth edition published July 2011 This edition published November 2014 © Crown Copyright 2004 A HANDBOOK ON ADVISING, BRIEFING & DRAFTING 3 Contents Introduction to this guide 7 Chapter 1: Ministers and civil servants: Characteristics, roles and relationships 9 Chapter 2: The Private Office 30 Chapter 3: How to brief a minister 38 Chapter 4: How to draft ministers’ letters 56 Chapter 5: How to draft answers to Parliamentary Questions 70 Chapter 6: How to write ministers’ speeches 95 Chapter 7: Civil Service ethics in practice 119 Appendix 1: The Civil Service Code 134 Appendix 2: Extracts from the Ministerial Code 141 Appendix 3: Extracts from the Code of Conduct for Special Advisers 149 Annex A: Ministerial Code: The Seven Principles of Public Life 153 IndeX 155 4 WORKING WITH MINISTERS A HANDBOOK ON ADVISING, BRIEFING & DRAFTING 5 Acknowledgements In these matters, as in Michael Meacher, Terry Burns, everything else, we’re all Peter Hennessy, Dennis standing on each other’s Kavanagh, Dicky Bird, Sean Lusk, shoulders. Many colleagues, Paul Grant, Jane Foulsham, knowingly or not, have Heather Todd, Michael Partridge, contributed to this handbook. Tony Shaw, Helena Charlton, Many of the ideas that follow Francis Coxhead, Zoe McNeill- have been stolen shamelessly Ritchie, Richard Jackson, over the years from friends and Chris Carr, Michael Duggett and colleagues of all kinds: civil Brian Whalley.
    [Show full text]
  • 1 Recapturing Labour's Traditions? History, Nostalgia and the Re-Writing
    Recapturing Labour’s Traditions? History, nostalgia and the re-writing of Clause IV Dr Emily Robinson University of Nottingham The making of New Labour has received a great deal of critical attention, much of which has inevitably focused on the way in which it placed itself in relation to past and future, its inheritances and its iconoclasm.1 Nick Randall is right to note that students of New Labour have been particularly interested in ‘questions of temporality’ because ‘New Labour so boldly advanced a claim to disrupt historical continuity’.2 But it is not only academics who have contributed to this analysis. Many of the key figures associated with New Labour have also had their say. The New Labour project was not just about ‘making history’ in terms of its practical actions; the writing up of that history seems to have been just as important. As early as 1995 Peter Mandelson and Roger Liddle were preparing a key text designed ‘to enable everyone to understand better why Labour changed and what it has changed into’.3 This was followed in 1999 by Phillip Gould’s analysis of The Unfinished Revolution: How the Modernisers Saved the Labour Party, which motivated Dianne Hayter to begin a PhD in order to counteract the emerging consensus that the modernisation process began with the appointment of Gould and Mandelson in 1983. The result of this study was published in 2005 under the title Fightback! Labour’s Traditional Right in the 1970s and 1980s and made the case for a much longer process of modernisation, strongly tied to the trade unions.
    [Show full text]
  • David Ray Griffin Foreword by Richard Folk
    THE NEW PEARL HARBOR Disturbing Questions about the Bush Administration and 9/11 by David Ray Griffin foreword by Richard Folk CONTENTS Acknowledgements vi Forword by Richard Falk vii Introduction xi PART ONE THE EVENTS OF 9 / 11 1. Flights 11 and 175: How Could the Hijackers' Missions Have Succeeded? 3 2. Flight 77: Was It Really the Aircraft that Struck the Pentagon? 25 3. Flight 93: Was It the One Flight that was Shot Down? 49 4. The Presidents Behavior. Why Did He Act as He Did? 57 PART TWO THE LARGER CONTEXT 5. Did US Officials Have Advance Information about 9/11? 67 6. Did US Officials Obstruct Investigations Prior to 9/11? 75 7. Did US Officials Have Reasons for Allowing 9/11? 89 8. Did US Officials Block Captures and Investigations after 9/11? 105 PART THREE CONCLUSION 9. Is Complicity by US Officials the Best Explanation? 127 10. The Need for a Full Investigation 147 Notes 169 Index of Names 210 Back Cover Text OLIVE BRANCH PRESS An imprint of Interlink Publishing Group, Inc. Northampton, Massachusetts First published in 2004 by OLIVE BRANCH PRESS An imprint of Interlink Publishing Group, Inc. 46 Crosby Street, Northampton, Massachusetts 01060 www.interlinkbooks.com Text copyright © David Ray Griffin 2004 Foreword copyright © Richard Falk 2004 All rights reserved. No pan of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher unless National Security in endangered and education is essential for survival people and their nation .
    [Show full text]
  • What Next for Labour?
    What next cover 6/9/09 9:48 PM Page 1 what next for Labour? what next Demos is grateful to all the contributors to this volume: Rushanara Ali what next for Associate Director at the Young Foundation Jessica Asato Acting Director of Progress Phillip Blond Labour? Director of the Progressive Conservatism Project at Demos Burks Peter Harrington and Beatrice Karol edited by Martin Bright Political journalist and founder of New Deal of the Mind ideas for the Philip Collins Chair of Trustees, Demos Jon Cruddas MP for Dagenham progressive left Alan Finlayson Reader in Politics and International Relations at Swansea University Maurice Glasman Director of the Faith and Citizenship Programme at London Metropolitan University A COLLECTION OF ESSAYS Lisa Harker and Carey Oppenheim Co-directors of the Institute for Public Policy Research Tristram Hunt Lecturer in History at Queen Mary, University of London Kevin Jefferys Professor of Contemporary History at Plymouth University Tessa Jowell MP for Dulwich and West Norwood. Minister for the Cabinet Office and the Olympics, and Paymaster General Sunder Katwala General Secretary of the Fabian Society Neal Lawson Chair of Compass David Marquand Chair of the Demos Advisory Council and Visiting Fellow, University of Oxford Michael Meacher Former Environment Secretary Richard Reeves Director of Demos Jenni Russell Writer, broadcaster and columnist for the Guardian Jonathan Rutherford Editor of Soundings and Professor of Cultural Studies, Middlesex University Stuart White Director of the Public Policy Unit at the University of Oxford ISBN 978-1-906693-17-6 £5 © Demos 2009 What next cover 6/9/09 9:48 PM Page 2 1 First published in 2009 © Demos.
    [Show full text]
  • E-Review: February's By-Elections
    reviewMarch 2017 www.hoddereducation.co.uk/politicsreview February’s by-elections CORUND/FOTOLIA Emma Kilheeney considers the results of the two February by-elections n two important by-elections on 23 February Labour lost the constituency of Copeland to the UKIP fails to steal Stoke IConservatives for the first time in over 80 years but held on to Stoke, defeating UKIP candidate and party When Tristram Hunt MP decided to end his political leader Paul Nuttall. career, and resign from his Stoke-on-Trent seat to become the director of the Victoria and Albert Museum, Conservatives conquer Copeland Labour knew it would have a hard fight against UKIP. In Copeland the Conservatives celebrated becoming As 69% of the electorate in the Stoke constituency voted the first governing party since 1982 to gain a seat in to leave the EU last June, UKIP hoped to capitalise on a by-election. Conservative candidate Trudy Harrison the Brexit issue, and ran its party leader, Paul Nuttall, as defeated Labour, which had held the Copeland candidate. In fact UKIP failed to make significant gains seat since 1983 and its predecessor constituency on its performance here in the 2015 general election. Whitehaven since 1935. Jeremy Corbyn fought off The Labour candidate, and winner of the by- calls for his resignation after his party lost this seat in election, Gareth Snell was helped by the fact that Paul its heartland. Nuttall made a series of political gaffs including: Professor John Curtice, of Strathclyde University, • being unable to name the six towns that make up told the BBC that the Copeland result was the best by- Stoke election performance by a governing party — in terms • falsely claiming to have lost close personal friends in of the increase in its share of the vote — since January the Hillsborough disaster 1966.
    [Show full text]